proportion of modern zoologists of note have rejected the order Bimana, and have regarded Man simply as a family of one and the same order, Primates.
Term 'Quadrumanous,' why deceptive.
Even the term 'Quadrumanous' has lately been shown by Professor Huxley, in a lecture delivered by him in the spring of 1860–61, which I had the good fortune to hear, to have proved a fertile source of popular delusion, conveying ideas which the great anatomists Blumenbach and Cuvier never entertained themselves, namely, that in the so-called Quadrumana the extremities of the hind-limbs bear a real resemblance to the human hands, instead of corresponding anatomically with the human feet.
As this subject bears very directly on the question, how far Man is entitled, in a purely zoological classification, to rank as an order apart, I shall proceed to cite, in an abridged form, the words of the lecturer above alluded to.[1]
'To gain,' he observes, 'a precise conception of the resemblances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each.
'The foot of Man is distinguished from his hand by—
'1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones.
'2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits.
'3. By possessing the muscle termed peronæus longus.
And if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division
- ↑ Professor Huxley's third lecture 'On the Motor Organs of Man compared with those of other Animals,' delivered in the Royal School of Mines, in Jermyn Street (March 1861), has been embodied with the rest of the course in his forthcoming work, entitled, 'Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.' Williams & Norgate, London.
